Cities and towns throughout the world depend on having clean potable water supplies. The dependence on clean water has increased as the population of the world has increased, especially as industrial use of rivers and lakes have become commonplace.
The explosion of world population, and corresponding increase in fresh water use, has resulted in a need to maximize water usage. However, the ability to maximize fresh water use has been limited by, (1) increased pollution of the fresh water supplies due to higher industrial output throughout the world (a direct result of the increased population); and (2) increased knowledge and standards for what constitutes clean water, acceptable for use in farming, industry, and consumption. As a result, there is a current need to increase the efficiency in the use of water, i.e., conserve existing clean water supplies, increase the current capabilities used to remove pollutants from water supplies, and increase the effectiveness of existing technologies and develop new technologies to effectively treat and reach new standards in water quality.
In this light, ammonia contamination of water resources has proven to be extremely problematic. High levels of ammonia commonly occur in wastewater, and occasionally drinking water, as a result of well contamination by industrial and agricultural processes. Presently, there is a trend to lower the ammonia discharge limits for facilities toward a range of 2 to 4 parts per million (ppm) from a previous ranges of 10 to 15 ppm.
Conventional ammonia removal technology has focused on additional aeration at wastewater treatment plant lagoons. In general, this remedy has proven ineffective. In contrast, a number of new technologies, focused on other wastewater related problems, have had the side-effect of lowering ammonia discharges. For example, activated sludge wastewater plants are being constructed to eliminate a full range of biological contaminants and have the added benefit of decreased ammonia discharges to 2 ppm or less. These plants however are expensive and not required in areas where the only problem is high ammonia levels. Further, technologies such as Sequence Batch Reactors (SBR's), Rotating Biological Filters (RBF's), and Trickle Filters are also used to solve non-ammonia related wastewater cleanup problems, but ammonia reduction seems to be an added benefit. However, these newer technological options require entirely new facilities or expensive rebuilds at existing facilities. This is an appropriate response where a wastewater problem is significant and requires a fairly drastic improvement. However, facilities with efficiently operating wastewater plants need options that are relatively inexpensive, compared to rebuilding the entire facility, and focused on lowering the ammonia discharge levels, not on other, typically more expensive, cleanup problems. Against this backdrop the present invention has been developed.